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by Annette Byford (Author)
A gripping auto-fictional novel about a long-kept family secret, painful love and female experience of barriers in society.
A young woman in post-war Germany is looking for a new start after the horror of the Nazi years and the war and has to make a far-reaching decision which will affect the rest of her life. Many decades later her daughter who lives and works a as a psychotherapist in present day Britain looks back on her mother's life and tries to understand this decision. She herself struggles with the loss of her husband and her own impending old age. As a consequence of looking at her mother's story and as a result of her own need to feel alive again, the daughter starts to mirror her mother's story and begins to echo her mother's experience of painful love and broken boundaries.
This is a book about guilt, love and identity. While it has at its center the fallout of a love triangle, the story is told against the backdrop of post-war Germany, with the world of psychotherapy and the narrator's experience of being an older woman providing an extra dimension. The author weaves personal reflections and poetic images into the narrative.
For readers who look for psychological depth: A Dance of Mirrors talks of a special mother/daughter relationship, of secrets and silence in families and in society and of women's struggle to be the authors of their own lives.
